In a recent trend, game developers have begun selling players early access to unfinished games on Valve's Steam platform. Titles like DayZ, Rust and many others have reaped colossal success through this method in recent times. Ubisoft's Ghost Recon Online is the latest game to follow this trend.

The game has been in beta for a long time now and its developer, Ubisoft, has explained their reason for releasing it on early access to Eurogamer.

"Bringing Ghost Recon Online to Steam has been our goal since the game's inception," said producer Corey Facteau. "We took the time necessary to reach a quality level that can go head to head with the best online games available today before releasing on Steam.

"As the top shooter for gamers who enjoy team gameplay, we have also seen our audience expand to include MOBA fans, who comprise fifty percent of our user base.

"To ensure a seamless transition to the new platform, we will use Early Access to fine tune the Ghost Recon Online experience before releasing it to the rest of the world," he added.o

The game has been available to players in beta since the mid 2012 and has finally come out through early access. However, the developer is yet to offer any details on its release date. A Wii U version of the game was initially planned, but has been put "on hold" for a long time.

Valve's Steam platform is becoming increasingly popular among gamers and is also being seen as the future of PC gaming by many. While the industry's other titans, Sony and Microsoft, have their focus trained on consoles, Valve is trying to bring gaming back to the PC.

The company has partnered with several hardware manufacturers to bring out Steam Machines, which are dedicated gaming computers running the company's linux-based, gaming-first, Steam Operating System.